Saturday, January 09, 2021

How close was that?

What an awful week. 
I'm still processing the horror of what happened, and what almost happened, in Washington. 
 It seems pretty clear now that Trump and his grotesque family wanted the mob to invade Congress and lynch them if they wouldn't declare Trump as President. 
Trump himself is so frightened by bullies that he would think the members of Congress would just collapse if they were threatened. 
 There is no option now except to impeach Trump, even though he likely won't be removed from office. He needs to go down in history as the only American president impeached twice, for malfeasance and for sedition. 
Here's an excerpt from a GQ article interviewing political consultant Arieth Kovler who studies Trump message boards on Reddit, Twitter, etc. 

 a lot of them also just imagined they were going to be there for this historic time when Trump pulled away the curtain and revealed that all of Congress were traitors and then took his just and equal revenge. There were a variety of characters: people who were there to watch Trump gain control and people who thought Trump would win, but only by activating the military, [with] a proper military coup that they supported. They thought they were there to go and purge Congress. They were there to stop the certification. They were there to punish those who went against Trump. When you put them all together, you get this explosive mixture.

The only thing that surprised me was that it was not the army I expected it to be.

Why do you say that?

They didn't have as many guns. They had this fantasy that, There are going to be thousands of us carrying AR-15s and what are they going to do? But many of them may have had guns in their cars and just didn't take them out. And maybe Capitol police were surprised and then took less forceful action against the protesters. And that's how these guys were able to march in. I actually feel like, if they were armed, it would have triggered a more severe response.

It sounds like there were plans for something much more severe. You're talking about the execution of members of Congress. Why do you think that didn't come to fruition?

A lot of these people were there for the ride. I think that had things gotten more violent, there would have been a lot of people who would be very willing to go along with it. I think that ultimately the police successfully kept elected officials out of the hands of these people.

There's also the question of what cues they're taking from Trump. While he was certainly quite contentious [in his video], it didn't quite rise to the level of, "Now is the time to act." He could have said something that was absolutely unequivocally understood by these people to be an order to attack. Instead, he told them to go home. It confused the hell out of them. On the one hand, there's a nudge and a wink, but they didn't understand. They thought, "Aren't we here to do a job? Did we do the job? Did we win?" It was a lot of confusion about what that was all about.

From what you've said, it sounds like a lot of this planning and organizing for this was really happening in plain sight if you were just willing to look and dig. Is that correct?

I think that's true, up to a point. In the last week or so, this stuff began to move more into private groups. I don't know what you would have gotten if you were in the private groups; the answer is possibly nothing. There was so much going on in public, I find it hard to believe that there was that much going on in private.

But my point is, if you knew this was going to happen weeks ago, it seems reasonable that we should expect that people in power should have known and prepped for this.

Yeah. I don't understand how things went as badly as they did. My only thought is that they were maybe expecting people to be more armed and when they didn't see a bunch of people carrying AR-15s they thought, “Aw, that's all right, it's just a normal protest,” and then failed to understand the gravity of the situation. But this was absolutely predictable....I'm also almost surprised to hear that they sort of were mapping out these pretty specific plans or fantasies, because it does seem that when a lot of them got into the Capitol Building, they didn't really know what to do. They went up on the dais, someone stole a podium, they trashed some offices. But it didn't appear that there was a coherent plan that had been worked out for weeks.

....When all these people were talking about their contingencies, it was always if and when Trump tells us to. The overriding message I was seeing was, "We're here to do a job, we don't know what that job is yet. When Trump said we're going to go to the Capitol, I guess our job is to go to the Capitol." But then they didn't get any further instructions, so there was a moment of, "Okay, now what? Surely this isn't why Trump called us to DC, we don't get it. This was where he was supposed to unveil the evidence, or arrest the plotters, or reveal that China is behind it." And then none of this happened.

I even saw people looking for post-Trump Trumpism. They're furious at Ted Cruz when he flipped back, and at Mike Pence, [in their minds] one of the biggest traitors. But now there's a little thinking that, "Trump kind of betrayed us, too. He told us he was the only one who could save the country and we believed it. And he's the only one who can stop Communist Joe Biden from selling organs to Chinese people. And he's not doing that and that means he's also a traitor." There's some very odd stuff popping up in Trump spaces right now. Obviously, that's not the majority of Trump fans, but there are all these people who just don't know, "Was there ever a plan? Was there a plan and it didn't work?" What we are going to see over the next few days is people trying to reassemble their worldviews.

....On these channels, are you seeing that people are excited at the prospect of him running again?

Honestly, no. I'm not detecting their enthusiasm yet, but that might change if he says he's going to do it. No one is saying, "Oh, well, we have 2024." Partly because they believe the elections are rigged. They don't think he can win in 2024.



I cannot get over how close the United States has come to facism. And they're not out of the woods yet.
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Monday, January 04, 2021

I think Trump will try to declare Martial Law

When Trump doesn't succeed on Wednesday to get Pence to "do something" about winning the election, I believe he is going to try to declare Martial Law, thinking that will stop Biden from being sworn in. 
It's going to be a nightmare. 
We're already seeing such bizarre stuff -- Senators and Congressmen maneuvering to get Pence to delay confirming Biden's victory, Trump trying to muscle the Georgia secretary of state to change the vote count; Dick Cheney (yes, Dick Cheney!) organizing a letter from every single former Secretary of Defense to tell Trump to back off; Lindsay Graham, Liz Cheney and Paul Ryan sounding alarms about what Trump is planning; even Tom Cotton backing slowly away from the debacle - and that was only Sunday. 
I can't imagine what Trump's Georgia rally on Monday will be like. 
And then the Georgia vote on Tuesday, the Electoral College confirmation or whatever it will be in the Senate Wednesday. 
Leaving Trump two more weeks to declare Martial Law before the Biden inauguration. 
Until I read this article tonight at Balloon Juice, I hadn't realized that  the people Trump now has in charge at the Pentagon are very frightening:
There is no way this letter is put together and then pushed for publication unless someone senior, most likely either senior uniformed personnel (general officers/flag officers) and/or senior executive service personnel at the Department of Defense or one of the Services unless someone got a message out to one or more of their former bosses. Someone is very worried that the Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, his Chief of Staff Kash Patel (who really works for Devin Nunes and was once thrown out of a Federal courtroom in Texas for being an ass and sanctioned by the judge in the case with an order of ineptitude), the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Acting as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations & Low Intensity Conflict Ezra Cohen-Watnick (who is the protege of LTG Flynn, Michael Ledeen, and Safra Catz and who has been completely unqualified for every position he’s been appointed to in the Trump administration), the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Anthony Tata (a noted racist, anti-Semite, Islamophone, homophobe, and all around bigot), and the Special Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense Douglas MacGregor (noted extremist kook) are up to something dangerous.
Not a reassuring bunch. The Constitution means nothing to these people, nor to Trump.
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Wednesday, December 23, 2020

My favorite Christmas videos

Here are some of my favorite "Christmas" videos, the ones I listen to every year around this time:
 

 This one is from one of the oddest Christmas specials ever:

 Here's my husband's favorite - it reminds him of his own trips home at Christmas time when he was a university student:  

And here's my own Christmas favorite - my mother always loved this song because she was in the Navy during World War 2 and she couldn't make the trip home to Saskatchewan from Halifax for Christmas. Its particularly apt this year, I think, for so many of us.
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Sunday, December 13, 2020

Christmas commercials

Yeah, I know, but I just wasted an hour of my life watching a TV show that supposedly had the greatest Christmas commercials this year and they were all pretty awful. Here's some better ones.
  • My new favorite: This one is worth watching until the end: The hospital bracelet at the end tells the story:
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    Sunday, November 29, 2020

    Dogs! Lots of dogs!

    For a delightful change of pace, here's some of the best dog videos now on the web:
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    Monday, November 23, 2020

    The tweet of the year

    This is from September: Turned out to be pretty good advice.
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    Monday, November 16, 2020

    Funny stuff

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    Saturday, November 07, 2020

    Oh happy day

    And finally, this:
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    Tuesday, October 20, 2020

    Of course its a matter of confidence

    Promoting the conceit that setting up a "corruption committee" to harass the Trudeau government isn't really an issue of confidence in the government is just silly.
    The Tories had initially billed the committee as one focused on “anti-corruption” in the context of probing the WE deal and other potentially questionable agreements. 
    While the Liberals say they agree a special pandemic spending committee could be set up, they argue the Conservative approach is overtly partisan and would just tie the government in knots. 
    Rodriguez has said giving the committee a specific “anti-corruption” focus implies an inherent lack of confidence in the government and that any vote in favour of probing government corruption would have to be interpreted as a lack of confidence in the government. 
     This is a gutsy play for the Liberals, if Canadians blame them for forcing an election right now rather than blaming the Conservatives and the NDP. But the Cons and the NDP don't really want to have to finance an election now. Not right now. 
    They want to wait until an opposition-led committee has uncovered some actual corruption or something that might be twisted into looking that way - like, say, some pandemic contract that actually benefited some Liberal supporter somehow. 
    O'Toole is doubtless absolutely convinced that there is corruption to be found -- because of course, if the roles were reversed, the very first people that a Conservative government would have been awarding no-bid contracts to would have been Conservative supporters.


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    Tuesday, October 13, 2020

    Thankful

    Well, as a matter of fact I DO know what to do with a pencil and a cassette tape. 
    But we survived our family Thanksgiving at home regardless - wearing masks, distancing, limited cooking/food prep. At least we got together and it was so great to see everyone. 
    We have a smaller family - just seven of us now - so it wasn't a large gathering either. 
    Here's some fun for the week: And of course, it wouldn't be a blog post without something relating to the US election: I guess one of the things I am most thankful for is that I live in Canada.
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    Monday, October 05, 2020

    just look on the sunny side of life

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    Friday, September 25, 2020

    An Outstanding UN Speech from Trudeau

    Trudeau addressed the United Nations today and his speech was simply outstanding: Here are some excerpts of what he said: 
     “The world is in crisis, and not just because of the last few months. Not just because of COVID-19. But because of the last few decades. And because of us”, he said in a pre-recorded speech for the gathering. 
    Mr. Trudeau recalled that following war and economic collapse, previous generations established the UN, and international finance organizations in the mid-20th century, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, thus laying the foundations for a rules-based international order and shared global prosperity. 
    “Today, all those institutions no longer serve us well enough on what they were designed for – defending multilateralism and international law, protecting human rights and open markets”, he said. “That is what the crisis of COVID-19 has shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt. That things have to change. And not just on the world stage – but at home, too.” 
     Mr. Trudeau said governments do not do enough for their vulnerable citizens, such as the elderly and the homeless. They
     also are not going far enough to eliminate systemic injustice, be it racism, homophobia or sexism. 
     “In the difficulties of our citizens, we can see reflected the failure of the institutions of our world”, he said
     Although COVID-19 has pushed many countries to the brink, and generated a humanitarian crisis, Mr. Trudeau warned of the greater threat of climate change. He called for “a new way of thinking” on climate, inequality and health. “Too often, concerted action is blocked – the needs of our citizens are denied – as a result of gridlock at decision-making bodies”, he charged. 
     “And why? Because there are few consequences for countries that ignore international rules. For regimes that think might makes right. Few consequences for places where opposition figures are being poisoned while cyber tools and disinformation are being used to destabilize democracies. 
     “Few consequences when innocent citizens are arbitrarily detained and fundamental freedoms are repressed. When a plane of civilians is shot from the sky. When women’s rights are not treated as human rights. When no one has any rights at all.” 
    Prime Minister Trudeau urged countries to use the present moment to shift course and work together to achieve a better future for all people. “We must understand our opportunities and our responsibilities to take real action, together. To protect each other, to support each other”, he said. 
     “If we meet this moment, if we rise to this challenge, I know that, like our grandparents did 70 years ago, we will lay the foundations of a better world.”
    The CBC coverage of the speech also noted that Trudeau did call out Russia, China and Iran for their hostile actions over the last year, without naming names. Over at the Globe and Mail, Bob Fife grudgingly admited that it is difficult for Canada to initiate sanctions on its own toward China over issues like Hong Kong and the Muslim Uyghurs while Canadians remain imprisoned in China.

    But enough about solving the world's problems.  
    Time to get back to the insanity next door, where Trump just announced he has issued a Presidential Permit [BTW, there is no such thing] for a new train line from Alaska to the lower US, through Canada:
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    Saturday, September 19, 2020

    Farewell to the United States

    Its difficult to realize that a governmental system that seemed to be so strong and healthy is actually so weak and brittle that the election of one man and the death of one woman could destroy it. 
     But that's the way I feel right now about the election of Donald Trump and the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 
    The Republicans in the US Congress are absolutely delighted with both. 
    They will replace Ginsberg as fast as they can with the most far-right, anti-abortion, anti-government conservative they dare to nominate, trusting on the immense pressure from evangelicals, Fox News, and corporations to force Senators Collins and Romney to confirm this person. 
    And America can say goodbye to the Affordable Care Act, to pro-choice rights and LGBTq rights, to voting rights and civil rights, to unions and workplace protections, to the Environmental Protection Agency and to every other progressive initiative since Roosevelt. 
     And I mean Teddy, not Franklin. 
    It will be the beginning of a new dark age for the United States. 
    I am not sure whether the country can actually survive as a nation. 
    Certainly they will no longer be the "leader of the free world" -- Trump has already made sure of that all by himself -- but they used to be able to bring some moral pressure toward other nations when people's rights were being trashed, and this won't be happening now, not when states and corporations will now have license to trash the rights of their own people.
    I am worried also about Canada. Saw this tweet today:
     
    Yes, that seems to be the case.
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    Friday, September 11, 2020

    Voting for delusion

     

    As I read this short piece at No More Mister Nice Guy, I felt increasingly horrified: 
    It's often said that Trump's approach to everything is "transactional." I think Trump's approach to reality is transactional. The truth is the truth when it serves his purposes. In those moments, Trump believes in reality. But in other moments, not only does he walk out to a podium and contradict reality, he does so without necessarily believing that he's lying. As I've said in the past, Trump doesn't believe in truth. There are (as we see them) facts, lies, and true and false interpretations of reality, but to Trump they're all equally valid. He'll use any of them to shape reality, and he'll believe whatever he's saying at the time, even if it contradicts what he said six hours ago. In part this is because, as Yastreblyansky says, he believes in the Power of Positive Thinking and therefore thinks confidence can shape reality. In part it's because it's important to him to be his audience's daddy, someone who dominates us the way his father dominated him.
    This is the man that millions of Americans voted for. And will vote for again. 
    I'm reading more stories now about Americans who don't believe COVID is actually real - they think its all a Democratic plot, and that millions of Americans are just getting the flu, and hundreds of thousands are dying of something they already had like heart disease. 
    I don't know what they think people are getting sick from in other countries around the world, but probably they aren't even aware that other countries actually exist.
    And I'm reading stories now about how people in small towns in Oregon and Washington and California think that Antifa, not campers or lightning, is the cause of the fires that are destroying their homes.

    Its absolutely crazy.
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    Sunday, September 06, 2020

    Dumkirk

    Yes, I know in the overall scheme of things, the sinking of some of the boats in Trump's boating parade this weekend is pretty trivial. 
    But there's nothing like trivial to make Twitter come alive. 
    The hashtag of the event is #Dumkirk:
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